Is there potential for a ‘superpower’ social media site?

With so many people having more than one social media network on which they post and keep updated with their friends, it can be hard to keep track of all the latest developments. Does this provide the space for a potential merger between social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook to create one ‘superpower’ social media? Or are the main social media networks too far developed to be able to join with each other?

Image – www.insidefacebook.com

When Twitter was still a start-up and emerging as a new social network some rumoured about the potential for Facebook to buy Twitter, however, with the way that both social media sites have now established themselves individually, the potential joining forces has disappeared. There are a number of reasons why it does not seem feasible for Twitter and Facebook to join forces, primarily because they are fundamentally different social media networks – used for different purposes, attracting different audiences and different formats.

Facebook is a site used to keep in contact with friends and family, in which you have a network of people who you know and would be happy to call a ‘friend’ and therefore would share pictures and more personal news with. On the other hand, Twitter provides a level of anonymity – you can use a username and create an alias if you wish – this detaches from the personal nature of social networking where you are connecting with friends. On Twitter you may have followers who you personally do not know – it can be a way to follow and receive updates from your favourite celebrity, your favourite sports side or companies relevant to your professional work life. Subsequently the nature of what you choose to share on these sites will vary. These fundamental differences between Twitter and Facebook therefore mean that it would be difficult to combine the two without confusion of what content you would choose to post. The reason people choose to have accounts for multiple social network sites is because they use them for different purposes – therefore there is little point in trying to merge their use.

Not only is the purpose of these social media platforms essentially different, their communication styles and formatting are at odds. The short and snappy sentences that are used on Twitter, with a maximum of 140 characters per post, are far from the 420 character potential with which you can create a Facebook status. Although both have the similar options of a ‘Like’ or ‘Favourite’, Twitter also features the ability to retweet (RT@) and to reply (@). Even though Facebook has taken some inspiration from the Twitter by introducing the hashtag (#) on Facebook, this has been done as a way for users to follow specific topic of conversation within a social network’s stream of user comments. Due to the privacy of most Facebook accounts, this still provides a slightly different service to the one which is offered on Twitter. The addition of hashtags to Facebook will make it easier for friends to see what other friends are talking about via topic, acting as a sorting mechanism so one can filter the information that they really want to see on Facebook. Facebook called it a “first step” in their announcement of hashtags – indicating that there may well be further developments to sort how you view information on Facebook. However, some may argue that this change has come in response to people using hashtags in their Facebook posts, implying that they post similar content to what they would on Twitter, but this still does not suggest that the two sites could function together efficiently if they were merged.

Image – www.insidefacebook.com

For those who do wish to combine their Twitter and Facebook feed and make it easier to access their tweets and status updates in one place it is possible to add Twitter to your Facebook page, this enables you to share your tweets to your Facebook friends. However, this does rely on you using Facebook and Twitter in the same way, for instance the majority of your Facebook friends will not be interested in your tweets relating to what you are working on in your professional life. Therefore, there are still barriers to whether Facebook and Twitter could be used in the same way.

What do you think?

Would there ever be potential for Twitter and Facebook to merge? What do you use these social networks for, do you post similar content on both? 

Rowena Cormack  

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